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Brian Williams and Deer Tick? No, not the insect (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 18 May 2009 | 12:06 pm Why Linux Is Not Yet Ready For the DesktopAn anonymous reader writes "Every now and then a new- or old-media journalist tries to explain to everyone why Linux is not yet ready for the desktop. However all those men who graduated from their engineering universities years ago have only superficial knowledge about operating systems and their inner works. An unknown author from Russia has decided to draw up a list of technical reasons and limitations hampering Linux domination on the desktop." Some of the gripes listed here really resonate with me, having just moved to an early version of Ubuntu 9.10 on my main testing-stuff laptop; it's frustrating especially that while many seemingly more esoteric things work perfectly, sound now works only in part, and even that partial success took some fiddling.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 18 May 2009 | 11:58 am UserVoice Raises Funding, White-Labels User Feedback Facilitator
In addition, the startup had announced that it has raised an extra $800,000 from a well-known group of investors, led by Baseline Ventures and joined by FF Angel (the seed investing vehicle for Founders Fund), Betaworks, David Shen Ventures, The Accelerator Group, Net Discovery and Howard Lindzon. UserVoice is essentially a hosted way for businesses to intelligently process the feedback it gets from employees and customers, acting as a social idea generator of sorts. This has proven to be a great way for software companies and web application developers to incorporate the tool into their product websites, basically extending their existing product feedback channels with a way for users to voice their opinions on new features, roadmap, etc. But UserVoice rightly recognizes that there are a lot of corporations and institutions (think education, healthcare, government bodies, etc.) that can benefit from such a service too, and aims to package its main product somewhat differently in order to cater to those as well. For that reason, it’s today releasing a white-label solution that enables its customers to embed branded widgets and communities into their websites and facilitate the streamlining of the aggregation and moderation of incoming suggestions, voting, and user feedback. These widgets can be fully customized with the ability to change the CSS, templates, language files, and more. Along with this, UserVoice is introducing ZeroLogin, a method for users to sign in to UserVoice with the same username and password as the company website that deployed its solution. To see such an integration in action, check out this feedback page on Animoto’s website, which is entirely powered by UserVoice. Last but not least, UserVoice let us know that it has attracted a very knowledgeable advisor to help the company gain more traction: Bob Pearson, who spearheaded IdeaStorm at Dell as the company’s former vice president of communities and conversations. Expect to hear more from this company in the future. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Source: TechCrunch | 18 May 2009 | 11:52 am Is Windows 7 really too expensive? - ZDNet
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 18 May 2009 | 11:48 am Diguang International Announces Results for the First Quarter Ended March 31, 2009SHENZHEN, China, May 18 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/-- International Development Co., Ltd. (OTC Bulletin Board: DGNG) ("Diguang" or the "Company") ...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 18 May 2009 | 11:30 am App Store Pioneer to Take Mobile Retailing to Any Device on Any Network with Plaza Retail- Qualcomm Expanding Plaza Suite to Give Customers Choice in Creating Rich, Personalized Content Experiences - SAN DIEGO, May 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Qualcomm...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 18 May 2009 | 11:30 am Alliance Data Secures Additional Liquidity Through New Three-Year Term Credit FacilityDALLAS, May 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alliance Data Systems Corporation (NYSE: ADS), a leading provider of loyalty and marketing solutions derived from transaction-rich data,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 18 May 2009 | 11:30 am Court case reveals ugly infighting at Motorola
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 Soft Sailor | Microsoft Filed Patent For A Motion-Sensing Controller Dubbed The ... Soft Sailor Although Microsoft hasn't confirmed this yet, I am sure that they are working on a motion-sensing controller device. It has been discovered that Microsoft has filed a patent for a device codenamed “Magic Wand” which is a device with an architecture ... Microsoft Trying to Patent a 'Magic Wand' Microsoft patenting 'Magic Wand' device |
 CNET News | Stand Firm Craig (and Jim) Washington Post South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is giving even the normally sleazy Attorney General title a bad name. This is an office that has little to do with protecting the public and everything to do with making high profile attacks on targets ... Police: Craigslist shift won't deter sex trade Read all 'Corporate & legal' posts in Digital Media |
Section: Audio, Home Audio, Portable Audio
Napster has just unveiled their latest plans to stay relevant in the subscription based music space. Putting aside the fact that many, myself included, had long since forgotten about Napster, they may be worth a second chance.
Napster will be offering a low-priced monthly deal, and by low priced I mean 5 bucks. What you will get for that price is a service that is similar to what we have with the Zune. In other words, you will be getting a combination of all-you-can-eat subscription downloads as well as five tracks to download and keep each month. Honestly that is not bad for that price.
I would say that Napster is finally doing something right with this offer, at this price you are basically buying five tracks each month, that is assuming you are paying a buck a track and getting the subscription portion as a bonus.
Keep reading to check out the full press release…
Napster Unveils Latest Digital Music Service
Napster Offers MP3s With its Popular On-Demand Streaming Service for One Low Monthly Price
LOS ANGELES – MAY 19, 2009 – Napster, the pioneer of digital music, today unveiled its latest music offering combining the freedom of MP3s with the discovery benefits of a high-quality streaming music service – all for one low price. For as little as $5 per month, Napster users get five unrestricted MP3 downloads, and unlimited access to Napster’s award-winning on-demand music streaming service.
Music fans now have the best of both worlds: MP3s to keep forever, play, transfer and burn as much as they like, as well as unlimited music listening from Napster’s catalog of more than seven million tracks. “There’s no need to settle for 30-second clips to decide if you want to buy a song,” said Chris Gorog, CEO of Napster. “For five bucks now you can have access to our entire music catalog and get five MP3s to add to your permanent collection.”
Napster users can now:
• Get five MP3s each month to download, with their choice of songs from the Napster MP3 library that covers all types of music from all the major labels and includes the largest catalog of independent artists available.
• Listen to any track, as often as they like, in CD quality from Napster’s catalog of more than seven million songs.
• Choose from more than 60 commercial-free radio stations and more than 1,400 expertly programmed playlists.
• Discover new music and artists through personalized recommendation tools.
• Enjoy the top hits from more than 50 years of Billboard charts. Want to know what was popular when you graduated high school? Now you can.
• Play MP3s on any MP3 player, including iPod®, iPhone® and music-enabled MP3 mobile phones.“A decade ago, Napster revolutionized the way people discovered and enjoyed music,” said Julie Owen, senior vice president of entertainment for Best Buy. “The brand that started it all is shaking things up again with this new service that provides music lovers continued access to the entertainment experience they’ve come to expect of Napster and Best Buy.”
The new Napster offering is now available for U.S. residents at www.napster.com.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Sydney Morning Herald | Wolfram Alpha Knows the Secret of Time Travel Wired News By Charlie Sorrel Wolfram Alpha launched late Friday afternoon, giving everyone, including bloggers, a weekend to play with the “computational knowledge engine”. Wolfram Alpha first impressions Wolfram Alpha: Wikipedia killer? |
Wolfram Alpha launched late Friday afternoon, giving everyone, including bloggers, a weekend to play with the “computational knowledge engine”. The service uses the back-end of Stephen Wolfram’s Mathematica to crunch out the answers to your questions.
It’s great, but this is the Gadget Lab, so why on Earth are we talking about the ultimate pub-quiz companion? Easter eggs, that’s why. Geeky, gadget-related easter eggs. Try typing “88 mph” into the search box. Here’s what you’ll find:
88 mph = speed at which Marty McFly needed to drive the Delorean DMC-12 in order to time travel.
Want more? Try Flux Capacitor. It turns out that the power needed by Doc Brown’s invention is just 1/10th the power required to shift the space shuttle off the launch pad.
There’s also a rather fun error page thrown when the engine is overloaded (pictured above), something I’m sure you’ll have already seen if you tried Alpha out this weekend.
Product page [Wolfram Alpha]
10 Even Better Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs [Mashable]
See Also:
Stephen Wolfram Reveals Radical New Formula for Web Search
 GamerCenterOnline | Fight over Duke Nukem Inquirer By Nick Farrell A ROW IS BREWING over the copse of the long awaited but never delivered game Duke Nukem. According to Cinemablend, Take-Two is miffed that 3D Realms, which it commissioned to finish the game, closed down before delivering it. 3D Realms defends over Duke lawsuit Take-Two accuses 3D Realms of Nukem contract breach |
One of the first Silicon Valley start-ups to go public in a long while–OpenTable–is expected to come to market this week, with venture firms hoping it will prove a tasty treat for Wall Street.
Whether the $42 million initial public offering of the online restaurant reservation service will prove a bellwether or not is unclear, since its business has–despite strong revenue gains over the last two years–has operating losses for much of its lifespan of 10 years.
OpenTable’s last three months of results, though, have seen a small profit. It makes money primarily from fees from restaurants it gets for a variety of services.
Revenue for 2007 was $41.1 million and for 2008 was $55.8 million.
OpenTable is most definitely a creature of Silicon Valley. Its CEO, Jeff Jordan, is a former top eBay (EBAY) exec, and one of its VC backers is Benchmark Capital, among others. Its venture funding has totaled about $50 million.
Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the San Francisco-based OpenTable is expected to price from $12 to $14 a share and then begin trading on Nasdaq under the ticker stock symbol OPEN later this week.
Proceeds from the sale of three million shares, OpenTable has said in regulatory filings, will net it about $16.1 million, with 48 percent of shares being sold by existing shareholders.
The IPO, underwritten by Merrill Lynch & Co., would value the company at about $280 million, which is about five times its 2008 revenues.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is giving even the normally sleazy Attorney General title a bad name. This is an office that has little to do with protecting the public and everything to do with making high profile attacks on targets that will generate a lot of positive press. All that press leads to a run for higher office.
Eliot Spitzer was the alpha male Attorney General, attacking the securities industry, Internet fraud and the mortage industry, among others. He was rewarded with the governorship of New York until his spectacular resignation.
Which brings us back to the subject of hookers, and South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster. Earlier this month McMaster, who is of course eyeing a run for governor, threatened criminal prosecution against Craigslist management if pornography and ads for prostitution were not removed from the site. Craigslist took extraordinary measures to comply.
But quiet compliance isn’t what McMaster is looking for. He wants handcuffs and a trial, the kind of stuff that Spitzer got. He issued the following statement on Saturday “As of 5:00 p.m. this afternoon, the craigslist South Carolina site continues to display advertisements for prostitution and graphic pornographic material. This content was not removed as we requested. We have no alternative but to move forward with criminal investigation and potential prosecution.”
Craigslist fired back in an uncharacteristically emotional post that noted how tame the current Craigslist site was compared to a number of other listing services in South Carolina, including one run by Microsoft.
Seriously? The craigslist adult services section for Greenville, SC has a total of 1 ad for the last 3 days, featuring a photograph of a fully clothed person. The “erotic services” section for Greenville, which we recently closed, has 8 ads total which will expire in two days, and even for these ads the images and text are quite tame.
Meanwhile, the “adult entertainment” section of greenville.backpage.com (careful with link, NSFW), owned by Village Voice Media, has over 60 ads for the last 3 days, and about 250 in total. In sharp contrast with craigslist, many of these ads are quite explicit, quoting prices for specific sex acts, featuring close-ups of bare genitalia, etc.
Of course, no one in mainstream legal circles thinks either company should be subject to civil suit, let alone a criminal investigation. But if for whatever reason you were so motivated, would you target a venue with 9 PG-13 rated ads, or one with 250 XXX rated ones?
And FWIW, telephone yellow pages and other local print media have both companies beat hands down as adult service ad venues for South Carolina.
Any interest in targeting them for criminal prosecution? Didn’t think so.
As we wrote previously, Craigslist is the hot site right now that triggers an immediate response from the press (it used to be MySpace, then Facebook). There is no public saftey issue in targeting Craigslist. The only issue is politics, and McMaster sees an easy target. I think he made a serious mistake, though, in targeting Craigslist. Not only are the allegations absurd, but he’s failed to realize the huge community of rabid Craigslist supporters. Spitzer always went after deeply unpopular targets. He would never have touched Craigslist.
I say to founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster: Stand firm. Don’t back down. In fact, just turn off the South Carolina site entirely and ban IPs from that state. Forever. And if they press criminal charges, fight it with everything you have.
The community will support you, and that’s one hell of a community, with 46 million U.S. unique visitors a month (Comscore, April 2009). Get 5 million of them (less than 1 in 9) to sign a petition calling for McMaster’s resignation (that’s more than the population of South Carolina). It won’t get him to resign, but it may get enough voters to remember how irresponsible he is when the election for governor comes around. And I’m pretty sure that petition will be the top search result for his name for a long, long time.
And if you do end up in jail, don’t worry. I promise to visit at least once a month, even though it will be in South Carolina.
More on the story at TechMeme.
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If you’ve been following the headlines on Techmeme over the weekend, you’ve likely seen more talk about the whole blogger vs. online journalism debate, the short-sightedness of big media and the inevitable demise of its historical business model. Every time that debate heats up, someone somewhere will at some point bring up the unlikely savior of the publishing industry once more: glorious micropayments.
This time, it’s The Guardian’s Frank Fisher taking a stand, and he says not only will micropayments guarantee the newspapers a future, it can also downright ’save journalism’, and oh, Google should be the one providing the infrastructure for it, too.
Time to debunk “Saving journalism, a farthing at a time”.
Fisher correctly points out the dismal state of the economy has driven advertising revenues down, and this puts newspapers in dire need of finding out how it should subsidize its operations in different ways, with the realization that the printing part of the equation is inevitably going to fade away and that there’s too little money to be made from online advertising to make up for the costs of transferring its entire publishing business (as it operates today) to the Web.
The rest of his opinion piece comes down to this: wishful thinking and misunderstanding.
“Publishers are in a nightmarish situation; they know the print side of their business is struggling, they know punters want their news online, but they can’t see how to make it pay. In desperation others may follow Murdoch’s retreat behind the paywall. Not good news for news addicts. It isn’t so much the money, it’s the usernames, passwords, subscriptions … Actually, it is the money. But publishers need a profit. Information might want to be free – but food and housing isn’t. So is there another way? Some model that brings in more than advertising, but doesn’t exclude casual visitors, either by cost or inconvenience? Well yes – an idea that won’t go away: micropayments.”
Publishers are in a nightmarish situation, and in large part they have themselves to blame for that. Fine with me if they want to escape from that situation by retreating behind paywalls - in fact, I encourage them to do so and die there soon so we can kiss that idea goodbye once and for all. How are paywalls bad news for news addicts? Those have been spoiled to death the past few years, to the point where information overload has taken over and made the consumption of news overly tedious. I know because I’ve been one of them ever since I’ve been able to read, and this was long before I discovered the Internet. Introduce paywalls, ease the choice for news addicts, see what happens.
Information is now a commodity, so deal with it. And yes, it should be free to end users. But how will that pay for food and housing of the people working in the publishing industry, you ask? I say it’s not our problem, and tough luck. In no way does the realization that the model doesn’t work anymore mean that the masses, lawyers, the government or any other institution should be bailing out newspapers for screwing up their chance to figure out this Internet thing in time and adapting to it. Publishers need a profit, like any other business, but that doesn’t mean they all deserve to turn one, and certainly not at the expense of better, more innovative ones that are waiting around the corner.
Go read the column in The Guardian (for free) to find out how micropayments for news would work in detail. Basically, it would involve Google doing the bailing out part I was talking about in the previous paragraph.
“The transfer potential of [Google AdSense] technology to a micropayments scenario is clear: individuals would sign up with Google, deposit funds. They’d have a unique ID attached to them at that point – an encrypted cookie stored on whichever PC they happen to log in with. When they visit a site with GoogleDosh embedded they’re allowed in, a fraction of a penny is switched to the content provider’s account for every item they read – if visitors aren’t GoogleDosh members, they’re re-routed, perhaps, to a précis, or a sign-up form, or even to a limited trial. The key difference from other micropayment schemes is scale – and that’s what beats individual site subscriptions too – sign up with one scheme, and you get access to thousands of sites. That’s my theory, at least. It’s technically simple – an easy step if publishers accept a single standard, and the success of Google Ads suggests they will. Publishers win, consumers win long-term by supporting content providers, and in the short term, if good sense among sellers prevails, they get a bargain: spending pennies a day for all the content they need.”
Publishers win, yes, to a certain extent. Google? maybe. Journalists? Up for debate. Consumers? Not likely. There are some content providers out there who have figured out how to build a business without the need for people to pay to support them, and their number will only grow in size in the foreseeable future. If anything, Google should (continue to) support them, and not the relics of another age.
For more perspective on micropayments, you should read “What Would Micropayments Do for Journalism? A Freakonomics Quorum”, in case you haven’t already. I’m lifting this part from the piece, a quote by Marshall W. Van Alstyne (associate professor in the Information Systems department at Boston University and a research scholar at M.I.T) because I think there’s no better way to conclude this post:
Putting micropayments on news is like putting tollbooths on an open ocean. Internet users, awash in a sea of information, will avoid new barriers by navigating around them. And frankly, the interests of a free society are rarely served by building barriers between the people and their news.
Amen.
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Nope, Twitter still hasn’t trotted out a business model yet — a couple of sponsorships from the likes of and AT&T (T) don’t cut it. And that may or may not be a problem for potential acquirers for like Google (GOOG) or Microsoft (MSFT). But it’s a non-issue for a growing number of startups that are hoping to succeed simply by positioning themselves in Twitter’s general vicinity.
Today’s example: StockTwits, a day trader-meets-Twitter site that just raised $800,000 from venture capital firm True Ventures. It’s not a ton of money, but StockTwits doesn’t need a ton of money. The site, which launched last fall with an $800,000 angel round, employs all of four people.
And it’s yet another bet that investor Howard Lindzon has made in Twitter: He’s also put money into bit.ly, a Twitter-centric url-shortner, and Tweetdeck, a useful Twitter client, alongside incubator Betaworks, which in turn invested in StockTwits’ angel round. Cozy! (Cozier: Lindzon was an early investor in Silicon Alley Insider, my former employer).
Like all of those companies, and just about every other company that’s trying to make money off of Twitter, StockTwits doesn’t have any kind of formal relationship with Twitter. It doesn’t need one: If you want to take advantage of Twitter’s data, and users, you can just plug right in, for free, via its open API.
As a wise man once said: “All of [these companies] are part of the burgeoning ecosystem that revolves around Twitter, which powers all of their companies by letting them plug into its data stream. In exchange, all of these companies make Twitter more successful, by bolting on frills and features to its bare-bones service.”
Name aside, StockTwits may be less dependent on Twitter than any of the other Twittery startups. StockTwits users employ Twitter to pass along investment ideas, but beyond that, it’s a fairly straightforward stock message board, the kind we’ve seen since the first Web boom.
Lindzon and cofounder Soren Macbeth plan to make money via ads, and by publishing newsletters/blogs on behalf of some StockTwits users (two of whom are already selling their investment advice for $60 a month). Basically, Twitter is a lead generator for the site.
Come to think of it, that could be a business for the Twitter team. Right?
Here’s a video interview I shot with Lindzon last week, where he declined to hand out any stock tips of his own. Presumably he’ll rectify that today.
Wee Web, a social sharing site for parents of newborns and small children, has merged with the Freshman Fund, a college savings gift registry. The integration of the sites lets parents create a single destination for families to both see updates on children and facilitate donations towards children’s education savings.
Created by the founders of online event planner Meetup, Wee Web lets parents create a central social networking site for their babies and children where they can upload photos, videos and Twitter-like updates and then restrict the site to be viewed only by friends and family. The site can be accessed by invitation and family and friends can receive update alerts on additions to the child’s page.
Freshman Fund is like a wedding gift registry for college savings. The free service lets friends and family make donations to a child’s college education fund that is transferred directly to a tax-free college savings plan that the recipient chooses.
The integration of the two sites is a pretty interesting idea, especially given that college tuition is a hefty expense for most parents. Wee Web estimates that private tuition for a private college can run upwards of $300,000. The ability for parents to solicit donations from the time a child is born until he or she is ready for college could be a very useful tool, especially in light of the current economy. There no shortage of competitor in the baby social network sites space, including BabySpot, KidMondo, and TotSpot which we reviewed here.
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Dear reader, TechCrunch owes you an apology. But at least we are apologising - unlike the many news outlets that ran the blatant PR that was the “104-Year-Old joins Twitter” story last week. To explain…
On May 15 two UK newspapers ran the story about 104 year old woman “Ivy Bean” / @ivybean104 joining Twitter. We correctly called it out as a ruse, but we got the wrong target. What none of those original stories told you, was that poor old Ivy had not joined Twitter just because it was suddenly the talk of the senior citizens home. No. She joined because home PC maintenance company Geek Squad signed her up, propped her up for a photo opportunity - even using her own account to Twitpic the event - and press-released the hell out of it. And the media fell for it.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
They say don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but this present Tokyo-based university Aoyama Gakuin gives to students in the School of Social Informatics does have a significant catch. The present in question is an iPhone the students get for free.
And the catch is that the iPhone will basically be used as a tracking device with which the university can control if its students are physically on campus or not (the main goal is to prevent cheating during roll calls). But the phone will also be used for digital lectures (podcasts), doing homework and taking tests (Japan is the world’s leading mobile nation for a reason).
550 students and staff members received the free devices last Friday. Aoyama Gakuin says that this is just a soft launch and plans to make full use of the system this autumn when the new semester starts. The university covers the basic fee for the iPhone (the hardware itself is “free” in Japan anyway), but students will have to pay when they exceed downloading limits.
Via Asiajin
Looks like someone had a lot of time to kill. Dave Chatterson guitarist built a Princeton Reverb amp that is an exact replica of the original. No parts are modified or glued together - it’s real Lego. It’s unbelievably detailed: Lego cabinet. Lego grille. Lego handle, fittings, speaker, knobs, switches, jacks, tube chart, reverb tank, power cord and footswitch.
You can read the whole interview and see more shots on Fender.com.
Charlie Skelton's Bilderberg files (Thanks, Alan!)
In comes the chief. Bossios Hoggios. "What the problem?" I tell him that I am being followed by the police, and that I would like it to stop, or be told the reason. "Why you here?" he barks. I tell him I am here for the Bilderberg conference at the Astir Palace. "Well, that is the reason! That is why! We are finished!" And he washes his hands of me, dismissing me with a gesture, striding back to his office. "Idiot," I mutter, unheard.Back to the photograph.
"How you know he is a policeman?"
"I know that he is, I've seen him talking to your colleagues at the checkpoint."
"You are not allowed to take photos of policemen."
"So I am being followed by policemen?"
He gestures out of the window.
"Where is he now, this man you say following you? Show me him."
I'm standing in a police station. I don't know what to say. They tell me to ring the police if I see them again. To ring the police if I see the police following me.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Gadgetrepublic | Sony wants you to move up from point and shoot cameras TG Daily By Andrew Thomas San Diego, CA - Sony has launched three new digital SLR cameras aimed at first-time buyers looking to step up from point-and-shoot cameras. Sony debuts three new entry-level dSLRs Sony Unveils Trio Of Alpha Digital SLRs |
The Observer’s John Koblin reports that the NY Times is considering putting a meter on usage of its site and charging once you’ve read too much.
Incredible.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
 TopNews United States | Scribd launches 'commercial channel' for sale of published work TopNews United States With the Monday launch of the online document-sharing service Scribd's 'commercial channel', authors and publishers can look forward to a boost in their sale opportunities, and the book-lovers can look for better bargains! paidContent.org - Social Publishing Site Scribd Adds E-Commerce ... Scribd Store: YouTube for Documents Becomes iTunes for Documents |
While readers of the print version of The New York Times spend an average of 40 minutes a day, visitors to the Web site (a vastly bigger number) spend just 30 hours minutes per month.
The company’s Times Reader is finding time spent is similar to the print experience, Rob Larson, VP of Digital Production, told Beet.TV in this interview taped at the paper’s offices earlier this week.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Before I headed to Atlanta to do fieldwork, I asked folks who follow me on Twitter (@zephoria) what questions I should ask teens. Many of the questions that I received were more general questions about teens, rather than questions for teens.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Unless Congress embarks on far-reaching change in public policy to maintain the viability of journalism as it evolves online, we will soon find ourselves with the remnants of a broken industry incapable of providing the knowledge necessary to manage life in a complex world. Journalism does not need a bailout, but it does need a sort of “recovery act” to bring the legal landscape in line with today’s publishing technologies.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
A mood of tension has gripped the White House in recent days as President Obama prepares himself for a new round of criticism from one of the nation’s most powerful and influential constituencies: pajama-wearing Internet users who post anonymous comments on liberal blogs.
In the West Wing, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel has set up a high-tech “war room” to monitor the blog comments from the President’s basement-dwelling critics, postings which one White House source said could be “really mean” in the days ahead.
 SlashGear | Acer's next-gen Aspire One Netbooks available now CNET News by Dan Ackerman We've already seen them previewed with the rest of Acer's upcoming lineup back in April, but the official release of the next generation of Aspire One Netbooks is finally here. Acer intros 11.6-inch netbook Acer's Aspire One D250 and 751 Hit Stateside |
 BBC News | EVER WONDERED how astronauts pee in space? Washington Post Last week, the space shuttle Atlantis blasted off for an 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. In addition to the seven American astronauts on Atlantis, there are three astronauts living and working on the international space station. Video: Astronauts' marathon mission to repair Hubble 'Bolt removal issue' hits Hubble spacewalk |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Fair Use and Online VideoAmerican University's Center for Social Media and AU Washington College of Law's Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, in collaboration with Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project, are launching a new video explaining how online video creators can make remixes, mashups, and other common online video genres with the knowledge that they are staying within copyright law.
The video, titled Remix Culture: Fair Use Is Your Friend , explains the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video , a first of its kind document--coordinated by AU professors Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi--outlining what constitutes fair use in online video. The code was released July 2008.
"This video lets people know about the code, an essential creative tool, in the natural language of online video. The code protects this emerging zone from censorship and self-censorship," said Aufderheide, director of the Center for Social Media and a professor in AU's School of Communication. "Creators, online video providers, and copyright holders will be able to know when copying is stealing and when it's legal."
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
The authors, who include Cambridge University criminologist, David Farrington, say while their results lend support for the continued use of CCTV, schemes should be far more narrowly targeted at reducing vehicle crime in car parks.CCTV schemes in city and town centres have little effect on crime, says reportResults from a 2007 study in Cambridge which looked at the impact of 30 cameras in the city centre showed that they had no effect on crime but led to an increase in the reporting of assault, robbery and other violent crimes to the police...
The Campbell Collaboration report says that CCTV is now the single most heavily-funded crime prevention measure operating outside the criminal justice system and its rapid growth has come with a huge price tag. It adds that £170m was spent on CCTV schemes in town and city centres, car parks and residential areas between 1999 and 2001 alone. "Over the last decade, CCTV accounted for more than threequarters of total spending on crime prevention by the British Home Office," the report says.
The Lords report said that £500 million was spent in Britain on CCTV in the decade up to 2006, money which in the past would have gone on street lighting or neighbourhood crime prevention initiatives.
"Photography and the videotaping of public places, buildings and structures are common activities within New York City . . . and is rarely unlawful," the NYPD operations order begins.Operations Order Investigation of Individuals Engaged In Suspicious Photography and Video SurveillanceIt acknowledges that the city is a terrorist target, but since it's a prominent "tourist destination, practically all such photography will have no connection to terrorism or unlawful conduct."
The department directive -- titled "Investigation of Individuals Engaged in Suspicious Photography and Video Surveillance" -- makes it clear that cops cannot "demand to view photographs taken by a person . . . or direct them to delete or destroy images" in a camera.
SHUTTERBUGGED
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Source: Boing Boing | 18 May 2009 | 4:58 am
Poster artist Dave Hunter (AKA Gammalyte) created this stunning concert poster for the Throbbing Gristle show in San Francisco last month. It has a wonderful '60s cartoon occult vibe to it. The seven color silkscreened print, approximately 20" x 26", is available in an edition of 250 for $50 each.
As books make the leap from cellulose and ink to electronic pages, some editors worry that too much is being lost in translation. Typography, layout, illustrations and carefully thought-out covers are all being reduced to a uniform, black-on-gray template that looks the same whether you’re reading Pride and Prejudice, Twilight or the Federalist Papers.
“There’s a dearth of typographic expression in e-books today,” says Pablo Defendini, digital producer for Tor.com, the online arm of science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor Books. “Right now it’s just about taking a digital file and pushing it on to a e-book reader without much consideration for layout and flow of text.”
With the popularity of the Kindle and other e-book readers, electronic book sales in the United States have doubled every quarter. Though still a very small percentage of the overall book industry, sales of e-books touched $15.5 million in the first quarter of the year, up from $3.2 million the same quarter a year ago. By contrast, the printed book market sales in North America alone was nearly $14 billion in 2008.
The rapid growth of e-books has piqued many publishers’ interest, enabling Amazon to sign all the major publishers and offer more than 275,000 books in its Kindle store.
But despite the rapid growth, e-books are still new territory for most publishers. Add proprietary publishing standards such as the .mobi file format for the Amazon Kindle, and you have a recipe for confusion among many would-be e-book designers.
“E-books today are where the web was in its early years,” says Andrew Savikas, vice-president of digital initiatives at O’Reilly Media, a major publisher of technical books. “And some of those e-books are as difficult to read and browse as the early web pages.”
After spending a weekend with the Sony e-book reader, I found that the convenience of having so many books in a single, lightweight, slim device had me hooked, and its screen offers nearly print-like readability. But after about four hours of flipping through blocks of grey text I found myself feeling strangely melancholic. It couldn’t have been the lack of sunshine. Moving from one book to another, while easy, didn’t help: I was still staring at the same font, the same gray background and the same basic layout.
I had stumbled onto the reason why design and fonts are so important in publishing, says Mark Simonson, an independent typeface designer.
“Different typefaces are like like having different actors in play or different voices in an audio book,” Simonson says. “The variations in typeface influence the personality of the book. Sticking to one font is much like having the same actor play all the different parts.”
It’s why creative directors at publishing houses try so hard to make one book feel different from another, says Henry Sene Yee, creative director for publishing house Picador.
Sene Yee’s department is cover design. A book’s cover design can be photographic, illustrative, iconic, typographic or something more conceptual, he says. In each case the cover is a finely-tuned representation of the book’s genre and the message it wants to send.
“It’s about what we want readers to see in the book,” says Sene Yee, who says his job is part designer, part ad man. He spends more than two weeks coming up with the first sketch of a book cover — one that he hopes will bait readers in.
If readers are not familiar with a writer, they make impulse buys in bookstores or even online, “so covers are what make readers pick up a book they don’t know,” says Sene Yee.
So, if book design is so important, why is it so absent from e-books today?
“Ultimately the sticking point for e-books is accessibility,” says Defendini. “A large component of this is making sure the text flows right and the fonts are appropriate, even while giving the reader choice to change that. That flies in the face of the traditional role of a typographer, who is in minute control of everything.”
Designing a cover specifically for an e-book is rare: Most e-book covers are digital images of their print namesakes. That’s likely to change soon, says Savikas, who compares e-book stores today to how Apple’s iPhone App stores were when launched.
“With the iPhone App store we have seen app creators get more sophisticated with their choice of icons or the screenshots they use to attract buyers,” Savikas says.
E-books publishers are likely to get there soon, agrees Tor.com’s Defendini.
“The illustrators will be big winners soon,” Defendini says. “The social aspect of buying e-books will go up, just like it did with apps and music.”
When it comes to the guts of the e-book, fundamental aspects such as fonts and page layouts become a battle. There’s a dearth of typographic expression in e-books, says Defendini. That’s because e-readers’ firmware offers few font choices. Licensing custom fonts from a well-known foundry or font designer, a ubiquitous practice in print book design, is an impossibility for e-books.
Savikas says O’Reilly Media learned the hard way when the first-generation Kindle was released. The technology publisher found that the Kindle did not have a way to ensure that blocks of computer code would remain intact and properly formatted.
“As a publisher we are not necessarily looking for 800 different font choices,” says Savikas. “But even at this early stage we are looking for a set of standard fonts that guaranteed to be in any device or software.
“It was frustrating to contrast the Kindle’s limited fonts with that of the iPhone, which has very rich support for fonts, spacing and layout,” he says.
A big part of the problem with the Kindle (the largest selling e-books reader) is its use of the Amazon-specific .mobi file format, rather than the open standard ePub. ePub is based on the XML and CSS standards used in millions of web pages and allows for far more control over layouts than is currently possible with the .mobi file format.
As a result, if publishers want to sell Kindle books, producers like Defendini have to do a lot of manual work to create the digital file. In some cases, that means almost page-by-page customization, ensuring that drop caps appear correctly and that text flows around illustrations properly.
E-books won’t stay ugly forever, says Sene Yee. The devices’ limitations are mostly because they are in their early stages. For instance, color e-book readers are not likely to be widely available until at least mid-2010. And the current black-and-white displays offer readers no choice beyond increasing or decreasing font size.
As e-book readers get more popular they will get more sophisticated, bringing in a new crop of designers that understand a changing world of digital publishers.
“People want more than just plain text and the technology will have to change and keep up with this need,” says Sene Yee. “It won’t stay ugly forever.”
See also:
Hands-On: Kindle DX is a Pricey Pleasure
Kindle 2’s Fuzzy Fonts Have Users Seeing Red
Wired Review of Amazon Kindle 2
Kindle Readers Ignite Protest Over E-Book Prices
Photo: Kindle DX (Bryan Derballa/Wired.com)
: Photo: U.S. Geological SurveyMount St. Helens today is synonymous with huge explosive eruption, death and destruction. But it wasn't always that way.
The mountain was once the center of a thriving recreational paradise and prosperous timber industry. Take a look at what the mountain looked like in the old days, during the 1980 eruption, and after … right up to the present.
Left: Young women enjoyed this view of Mount St. Helens from the Helen Leonard Girl Scouts Lodge in Gifford Pinchot National Forest in August 1956. (Just to keep time in the proper perspective, this photo is closer to the time of the mountain's huge eruption than we are today.)
: Photo: USGSThese Boy Scouts sailing on Spirit Lake near the mountain may have been trying to reach the Girl Scout camp.
: Photo: USGSSt. Helens' pristine snow-covered cone, seen here from a boat in Spirit Lake, reminded many people of Japan's Fujiyama volcano.
: Photo: USGSThe volcano rumbled back to life in March 1980 after 123 years of quiescence. The steam-and-ash eruption began March 27.
: Photo: USGSMount St. Helens' colossal eruption on May 18, 1980, sent a huge column of steam and ash skyward, and mud and ash northward (away and to the left in this view).
: Photo: USGSThe initial blast of steam, other hot gases and debris stripped, burned and flattened trees that had towered 150 feet. The eruption destroyed 200 square miles of forest.
: Photo: USGSBeyond the area of total devastation, tree trunks still stood, and some vehicles survived. You could shovel the ash off your hood, but woe (and whoa!) to your engine if it sucked this stuff in.
: Photo: NASA (Earth Observations Laboratory, Johnson Space Center)This 2002 photo from the International Space Station shows the lava dome that built in the crater in the first decade after the 1980 eruption. It rises 876 feet above the crater floor and measures about 3,500 feet in diameter. The 1980 blast zone starts at the gray area on the north (upper left) side of the summit crater.
: Photo: USGSMount St. Helens erupted again from September 2004 to January 2008, building the dome in the summit crater. It's seen here In October 2004, a period of robust dome growth.
: Photo: USGSDome growth slowed down, but the ash and steam continued, as in this July 2005 view. By 2007, the dome was the size of about 200 large sports stadiums.
: Photo: U.S. Forest ServiceHere's what Mount St. Helens looked like (from the north) when we were preparing this gallery Friday, May 15, 2009. You can check the latest high-def webcam view now.
See Also:
May 18, 1980: St. Helens Blows Its Top Off
1 // It's black
Well, it's really more of a dark gray. The moon appears white because we have no point of comparison in the night sky. It's an optical illusion. If there were a truly white object next to it, the moon would look quite dingy.
2 // It has dust storms
Astronauts report that plumes of particles rise off the lunar surface at dusk and dawn—even though there's no wind. How? One theory is that solar radiation creates an electrostatic charge that lofts the dust into space.
3 // It's from here
The leading explanation of lunar origin, the so-called big whack hypothesis, posits that the orb was created when a planet-sized object slammed into Earth, knocking off a cloud of vaporized rock that eventually condensed into the moon.
 guardian.co.uk | Cheaper iPhone Plans from AT&T? BusinessWeek By Olga Kharif Victor Lin wants an iPhone, but he's put off by the price. The smartphone costs at least $199 up front, and if he wants unlimited Web and e-mail access in addition to calling, he'll need to pay an additional $70 a month. Apple Reveals Future of new iPhones. Embedding Video In a Site For iPhone/iPod? |
That would be Walt Mossberg and his well-known Personal Technology and Mossberg Mailbox columns–as well as BoomTown, John Paczkowski’s Digital Daily, Peter Kafka’s MediaMemo, Katherine Boehret’s Mossberg Solution and video and photographs from our famous D: All Things Digital conferences.
Today, All Things Digital is introducing its very own app for Apple’s iPhone and the iPod touch, offering all the posts and columns you get on this Web site–including news, product reviews, analysis and video–from our crack team.
Just smaller and cuter.
All free. All mobile. And completely designed to let you access ATD content 24/7/365, which is how we like it.
In addition, the app will allow users to post links directly to both Facebook and Twitter, because we also like you to overshare our content.
Developed by the amazing team at NewsGator–with additional heavy lifting by ATD staffers Christine Mohan, Adam Tow and Mossberg–for some months, the app was first available in…Latvia and London. Also France and Australia.
Frankly, we don’t grok the method Apple (AAPL) uses to globally spawn apps, but it has now reached the U.S. at the iTunes store. You can also get info about the app here on our site.
So download us and take us along everywhere you go–ATD really enjoys long walks on the beach.
Here is the full press release about our newest digital delivery at ATD:
Like everyone else, Digg has a serious case of Twitter envy. And they’re doing something about it.
In an interview last month Digg founder Kevin Rose told me that the company was working on an overhaul of the Digg service, calling it a “completely new direction” and referring to the new Digg search as an indication of what direction they’re going in. He didn’t (and still won’t) give many details, except to say that Digg needs to to “a living and breathing site” and “a little bit more real-time in nature” (”real-time” is secret code for Twitter, and has been used so much lately that people are mocking it).
Earlier in the interview Rose talked about wanting more user participation on the site, with top stories getting 50,000 or more votes (most top stories get a few thousand now). The new product is designed to encourage more user engagement.
We’ve taken the relevant clips from the original interview below. Whatever it is, it’s coming sometime soon.
Clip Transcript:
Rose: What we’re working on now is what I would consider to be the biggest overhaul to how everything works behind the scenes, and that’s no joke. Like we…
Arrington: Front end and back end rewrite?
Rose: Completely new directions for us that you will look at and I guarantee you would be like that’s a ballsy move. Like it’s really, we’re evolving and we’ve got some really exciting things that we believe are going to take us to that turn.
Arrington: What’s the timing? Is that this year?
Rose: I mean, I’m not going to give out hard dates, but it’s some time in the next six months.
Arrington: What might that look like? Like, what are we talking about?
Rose: Well, we’re talking about a revamp of the site.
Arrington: Like a logo change?
Rose: Yeah, a logo change is going to get us there. We’re talking about some lens flares on the logo…
Arrington: Well, what are you going to do so that somebody’s going to, like, “Hey, here’s the stories.” And they’re saying, “Digg it!” I mean that’s kind of it. Right? It’s like a one trick pony with bells and whistles attached. I mean, I agree that most of your changes are bells and whistles. So, what is it that you’re going to do that doesn’t kill your core idea that’s a whole new thing?
Rose: I can’t go into that stuff right now.
[later in interview...]
Rose: I will say this. I don’t want to get into specific details about the product, but I believe that it’s time for Digg to get a little bit more real-time in nature. And we need to be a living and breathing site. And you know, that’s an exciting direction for us. I think that’s part of the reason why we rolled out a pretty awesome search. It was kind of us experimenting with some of that.
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The somewhat depressing and controversial possibility of a newspaper bailout turned into a stone-cold reality in the past few months as politicians, including Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Ben Cardin and President Obama, have hinted at giving the newspaper industry a life vest to save a sinking industry. Kerry, in his dire remarks at the Senate hearing on “Future of Journalism” a few weeks ago, made a call to action to save newspapers and prevent future harm to democracy. Regardless of where direction of this policy is headed, the idea of a government bailout of the news industry, which is supposed to be the “watchdog” of the government, raises a few ethical flags.
President Obama echoed Kerry’s concerns at last weekend’s White House Correspondents Dinner, addressing the current state of the industry:
“…It’s also true that your ultimate success as an industry is essential to the success of our democracy. It’s what makes this thing work. You know, Thomas Jefferson once said that if he had the choice between a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, he would not hesitate to choose the latter.
Clearly, Thomas Jefferson never had cable news to contend with — but his central point remains: A government without newspapers, a government without a tough and vibrant media of all sorts, is not an option for the United States of America.”
Obama was perhaps posturing to a room full of journalists, but the message comes across clear: newspapers not need help and their existence is a fundamental requirement for democracy to successfully survive. And any time democracy is threatened, the government will come to the rescue, right?
Sen. Ben Cardin actually has a concrete plan, The Newspaper Revitalization Act, to aid newspapers in their time of need. His plan allows newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, and thus receive the same tax-benefits as a non-profit organization. Revenue from advertising and subscription would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible. Cardin’s proposal became a reality on the state-level with this week’s news that Washington’s governor approved a tax cut for the state’s newspaper industry. The law gives newspaper publishers a 40 percent cut in the Washington’s main business tax.
The catch for Cardin’s proposal is that though newspapers would still be able to report on all issues, namely politics and political campaigns, the government would prohibit the newspapers from making political endorsements. This raises two ethical questions.
The first is whether newspapers supported with government funding should be barred from making political endorsements.
Political endorsements by newspapers and media organizations are a very essence of freedom of speech. Readers often find value in seeing a newspapers evaluation of the candidates given that the paper has in-depth coverage of political candidates throughout the course of a campaign. Putting a muzzle on journalists in this capacity is a step in the wrong direction.
There are existing models for publicly-funded or assisted media that are not limited from endorsing political positions. The clearest example of this is the U.S.’s PBS networks. PBS is a non-profit media organization that is partially funded by federal and state money (less than 50% of PBS’s revenue comes from government sources). PBS stations are not prohibited from taking a stance on political issues, in accordance with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, but PBS and the government has been embroiled in several sticky situations involving political bias and politicians feeling that they can somehow control PBS’ coverage.
Most recently, Kenneth Tomlinson, the former Republican chairman of the Center for Public Broadcasting, the non-profit in charge of distributing federal funds to public television and radio stations, openly criticized PBS for a liberal bias. Tomlinson even hired an outside investigator to evaluate whether PBS’s political news coverage was slanting towards the left. In fact, it was revealed that most viewers didn’t think PBS’s news favored liberals; however, Tomlinson and other Republicans engaged in a heated debate questioning the bias of the well-respected news organization. Like PBS, the BBC, UK’s largest media organization which is partially funded by taxpayer money, has found itself embroiled in its fair share of accusations of political bias.
Some would argue that PBS represents a segment of the media in the U.S. whereas a newspaper bailout would effect thousands of news organizations. I fear that if most mainstream newspapers and organizations took on a similar model to PBS, many politicians would feel that they had the free reign to not only question, but investigate, the bias of any unfavorable news coverage if it didn’t lend support to their political leanings.
The second ethical question is whether journalists will be able to deliver unbiased reporting of the very people and institutions that are helping to subsidize their jobs. I think journalists at PBS have done an effective job of objectively reporting the news, despite the political pressure the organization faces from politicians. However, newspapers and thus journalists who are “saved” from government intervention are in a slightly different situation. From its inception, PBS was meant to be a non-profit news organization, that drew funding from a variety of sources, including the government. In the case of a newspaper bailout, the government could don the image of a “knight in shining armor” to journalists who, without the bailout, would be unemployed. Will all journalists and media execs buy into this? I’m not sure of the answer but the adoption of this perception surely could effect objective news reporting.
Yet having an appreciation for a policy, and letting that appreciation impact professional integrity are two different things. Would the politicians who supported the bailout receive favorable coverage? Most journalists would respond with a resounding no, as they should. Journalists are all beholden to an unwritten code of ethics when it comes to reporting the truth. And even in most disastrous modern-day case of a politician’s efforts to control the media, journalists have still proven that they fight to report the truth. Italy’s prime minster, Silvio Berlusconi, has been accused limiting the press’ freedom of expression by controlling negative coverage of his government on state-run media networks and papers as well as the institutions he controls financially. Many Italian journalists have retaliated, quitting their jobs, forming protest groups, and advocating fiercely for greater freedom of speech. These reporters have chosen dissent and unemployment over submission and employment within a state-biased media space.
But the dilemma becomes significantly more cloudy when the hand who is throwing a life vest to the drowning industry is the same hand who needs to be evaluated through an objective lens. And the question remains in the case of a bailout, if there will forever be the government’s shadow hanging over the media organizations who survive thanks to these benefits.
(Photo credit: Flickr/VaxXzine)
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I really don’t know what to make of this Tweet from ChenelleB who is on the Xbox 360 team, but something is brewing in Redmond. What do you think she’s referring to?
getting an earful cause Xbox 360 broke… What can I say, I still prefer it as a console. Just wait. Even better stuff is coming soon!
General Motors is finally letting us drive a Chevy Volt test mule on Monday, May 18 after weeks of emails. There is a lot that we would like to know about the electric sedan and it’s revolutionary power plant, but how about you? Leave some questions in the comments after the jump and we’ll do our best to get them answered.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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(Image: Jimmie's ugly camera, from connors934 on Flickr)
My Ugly Camera
Source: Boing Boing | 17 May 2009 | 7:51 pm
* "¡Esta revolución será tuiteada!," they're saying -- "This revolution will be tweeted." Massive demonstrations are taking place in Guatemala today, organized, amplified, and documented by social media networks -- namely, Ustream, Twitter, and Facebook.
* The independent Guatemalan online media organization Libertopolis is streaming live video of the massive pro- and anti-government demonstrations taking place in Guatemala. The Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre also has a live video stream (both on Ustream.tv). All of this media is in Spanish.
* Twitter is exploding with on-the-scene reports. As of 9am PT, some 5,000 10am PT, 50,000 people gathered in the Plaza Italia area of the capital (photo/via washwash, another here.) Most of the demonstrators wore white to symbolize peace.
* Where to find on-the-scene reports via twitter: El Periodico, Noticias Guatemala, Prensa Libre. Also, follow #escandalogt. Some Guatemalan twitterers were saying last night they planned to print out "V for Vendetta" masks and wear them en masse to the demonstrations today. Organizers on Twitter urged all who planned to participate to report anomalies or rights abuses by authorities, and observe cautionary guidelines to avoid violence.
* Online reports are coming in that governors, under duress from the state, have used public funds to ship busloads of primarily poor, indigenous citizens from the interior and north of the country to participate in government-planned pro-Colom demonstrations. Twitterers on the scene say the government-organized, pro-Colom demonstrations number about 2,500 participants as of 10am PT and include a patriotic musical performance.
* Last night, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala ruled that law enforcement must not take sides in today's demonstrations, and must preserve and uphold the citizens' right to free expression. Police in the capital are on "maximum alert" today.
* President Colom: "They don't know who they're messing with."
* Update, 1230pm PT: The demonstrations ended peacefully. Organizers collected approximately 30,000 signatures on-site, demanding Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom temporarily step down so that a judicial inquiry into his alleged involvement in the assassination of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg may proceed without interference. Many who texted updates from the streets spoke of a moment during the anti-Colom demonstration when the entire crowd spontaneously sang Guatemala's national anthem in unison. "Over 50,000 people singing the anthem was epic," tweeted one participant.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AP - For a brief shining moment in the 1980s, Ottumwa was the unlikely hot spot of the fledgling video game industry as gamers around the globe flocked to this sleepy Iowa city and its video game arcade for a series of landmark tournaments.
Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers
A popular phone designed for texting started off as the LG enV, then the enV2, and on May 29, the enV3 will become available. I haven’t owned any of these phones, but I do see a lot of my friends using them, so they are popular enough for LG to manufacture another enV and for Verizon to retail another one.
Going along with the basic design of the past two phones, the enV3 features a 1.5-inch external screen and opens up to reveal a 2.6-inch screen. Neither screen is a touch screens. As usual, it comes with a QWERTY keyboard, but also comes with a standard number pad on the exterior. In addition, the camera is a 3MP one with flash, has support of many Bluetooth profiles, basic HTML web browser, GPS navigation technology, and a microSD memory expansion of 16GB. With its 2.5mm headphone jack, it is quite possible to listen to a lot of music, especially since you can use a microSD card for additional memory.
In terms of pricing, with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in-rebate, it will sell for $129. However, without a contract or mail-in-rebate, the enV3 sells for $299. Obviously, the enV3 is best suited for people who are on Verizon and looking to either start or renew a 2 year contract. Expect it to become available in the Verizon online shop as well as all physical stores.
Check out a few more pictures below.
Via [BGR]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of participating in the closing panel at the Convention on Modern Liberty with Billy Bragg, Lisa Appignanesi, Feargal Sharkey, Paul Gilroy and Henry Porter. The Convention was a whole-day event in which activists, scholars, Parliamentarians, regulators, teachers, cryptographers and others. On the closing panel, we were asked to give closing thoughts on the event -- I talked about the fact that British authoritarians have promised us security in exchange for taking away our liberty, but have not delivered; we've lost our freedom and been made less secure.
The Convention's just uploaded the videos from the event, and I really enjoyed watching it from the other side of the stage, especially Billy Bragg's talk. The last question -- "What has moved our rights forward?" -- was especially good.
Cory Doctorow at Convention on Modern Liberty
Final thoughts at Convention on Modern Liberty
Source: Boing Boing | 17 May 2009 | 6:24 pm
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Thanks for having me aboard these past two weeks, engaging with me so honestly and provocatively, and for quickly scrolling past my posts if they just strayed too far from what it is you know and love about BoingBoing. The beauty of guest bloggers is that we are temporary. And no matter how combative we get in these spaces, sometimes it's good to remember we're all on the same side.
I do hope I get to meet a lot of the people I engaged with in the comments sections, here. I'll be touring - both for my Life Inc book and, more importantly, to promote ideas for DIY commerce. I really do believe the BoingBoing ethos of open source and cyberpunk (make) culture dovetail perfectly with those of complementary currencies, peer-to-peer lending, and other non-outsourced finance. And I look forward to taking what I've learned into the field and into the media.
There's two more excerpts coming up to finish the serialization on BB, too - this Monday and next.
For those of you who may want to catch up or meet up, here's where I'll be the next few weeks. You can always find out where I'm going to be via http://rushkoff.com - and I'll be on the MediaSquat via WFMU every week, as well, so call in. Please don't be strangers.
Thanks again. Your humble but happy mutant,
Douglas
Upcoming gigs:
NY: May 26th:
Reading in Irvington, 8pm-9pm
Chutney Masala
4 West Main Street in Irvington, NY
NY: May 31st: Comp Currency panel, 1-5PM St. Marks Church 2nd Ave & 10th St
Boston: June 2. Boston Public Library, book reading, 6pm 700 Boylston St.
NY: June 7th: Life Inc. Book Party, open to public Comfort Restaurant 583 Warburton Ave, Hasting-on-Hudson, NY 10706
SF: June 9th: Booksmith, reading and signing, 7pm - 8pm PST 1644 Haight St,
Seattle, June 10th: HL2.com, Seattle talk and signing, 7pm PST www.hl2.com/
Redmond: June 11th: Lecture at Microsoft, 10:30 am - 11:30 am PST
NY: June 16th McNally Jackson Books, book reading and signing, 7pm - 8pm 52 Prince Street,
NY: June 18th: Blue Stockings, book party and talk, 7pm 172 Allen St
NY: June 29th: Personal Democracy Forum www.personaldemocracy.com/
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Lifestyle, Gaming, Mobile
Disney’s Epcot always struck me as close but missing the mark. Sure I love the German umpa bands and the Mexico tour but it just wasn’t the thrill ride of other parks. That may be changing with the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure that takes park goers on secret missions full of surprises.
Upon checking in, guests are given a flip-phone to receive their clues and instructions. The whole Adventure is woven into Epcot so park goers not playing don’t even realize anything was changed, very low key and ups the game play interest. Kim Possible is Disney’s animated kid-friendly 007 like cartoon that centers around a very capable girl. In keeping with the theme, the issued flip phones are called Kimmunicators.
The Kimmunicators display text and video guiding you through lands. There are multiple adventures, so repeat game play is high. And even better, Disney takes advantage of GPS in the phones to let us know when we’ve strayed to far off course and adjusts automatically.
Missions are designed with groups in mind and can last anywhere from 45 to 60 minutes. 2 to 4 agents can share a Kimmunicator. Kimmunicators even recognize when a team has broken away from the action—even secret agents need ice cream breaks—and will alter your mission accordingly.
Missions for the sake of fun? Nope, save the world, dummy. Disney tells us you’ll feel like a secret agent, solving puzzles while everyone else is just wandering around oblivious to your objectives. I can see families really getting into this.
In the China Pavilion, for example, you must rescue the precious Jade Monkey from Lord Monkeyfist and his monkey ninjas. In the Germany Pavilion, you must stop Professor Dementor from using his evil mind-control device to influence world leaders.
If you’ve got plans to head to Disney anytime soon, make some time for this. I can’t wait.
Source: [Disney]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Want a Moxi HD DVR? Do ya? Really?!? Well, Digeo is giving away two of the DVRs.
All you have to do is fill out a form to be entered in one of the giveaways. The other giveaway is a bit more involved, but also includes a 500GB external hard drive and an extra $1000 bucks for your home theater setup. Both include a one-year Rhapsody Unlimited membership and a PlayOn license. I wasn’t a big fan of the DVR, but free is free. What do you have to lose?
The FCC has Asus' new netbook in, and JKKMobile spotted it. Inside is GPS, mobile internet, and a nonremovable battery.
And yes, non removable battery.. BAD Asus BAD!For big laptops, I don't care about battery replacement, because the one that comes with it will last long enough to make stripping the machine down acceptable. But people swap batteries out on lightweights every day-- the batteries are often so small and light it's no trouble to bring an extra one--or buy massive aftermarket 13000mAH ones so it can calculate weather patterns all day. Application 391202 [FCC via JKK]
FROM APPLETELL - If you’re looking for a great new game for your iPhone or iPod touch, you’d have thousands to pick from. Let us help you with that decision, by showing you four great titles guaranteed to be fun.
MORE »
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What is this? Team Fortress 2 day? Ah, well. I’m not sure if this is an official video from Valve, but it’s great. Seriously. Spend 3:20 of your lazy Sunday and watch it. And then watch it again.
Jason sez, "The Swedish artist Montt Mardié thought The Pirate Bay needed an theme song, an anthem. So he created one! We like it a lot and hope you like it too. You can download the torrent here, and watch the video as well. We also got the audio files so all you TPB fans can make your own version, your own remix! It would also be cool if you did your own version of the video and post as a video response on youtube. As Montt Mardié put it: 'To show the world, that we're all The Pirate Bay...'"
WE'RE ALL THE PIRATE BAY
(Thanks, Jason!)
Source: Boing Boing | 17 May 2009 | 2:54 pm
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No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
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This instructable is labeled as a “fancy steampunk blunderbuss rifle,” but we won’t go into the many reasons it isn’t a blunderbuss rifle model. Chances are the builder just liked the name blunderbuss and forgot about the part where those guns had short barrels and didn’t need a scope since they fire scatter shot. Still, this steampunk rifle isn’t that hard to make.
All it requires is a banister, an old lamp (I hope he got his mom’s permission), and some gold spray paint. Throw some random wires and curly things on there to make your own steampunk rifle. Just don’t call it a blunderbuss unless you remove the scope and chop the barrel.
Once again, the Internet is shifting before our eyes. Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages. The shift is palpable, even if it is only in its early stages. Web companies large and small are embracing this stream. It is not just Twitter. It is Facebook and Friendfeed and AOL and Digg and Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop and Techmeme and Tweetmeme and Ustream and Qik and Kyte and blogs and Google Reader. The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness.
This real-time stream has been building for a while. It began with RSS, but is now so much stronger and swifter, encompassing not just periodic news and musings but constant communication, status updates, instantly shared thoughts, photos, and videos.
What does this mean for how we will come to consume information? John Borthwick from Betaworks has identified the real-time Web as a key investment opportunity (Betaworks portfolio companies include Twitter, bit.ly, Tweetdeck, Chartbeat, and Tumblr). He admits he and other investors are still feeling in the dark, but he describes the shift he is trying to capitalize on this way in a post titled “Distribution . . . now”:
First and foremost what emerges out of this is a new metaphor — think streams vs. pages.
In the initial design of the web reading and writing (editing) were given equal consideration - yet for fifteen years the primary metaphor of the web has been pages and reading. The metaphors we used to circumscribe this possibility set were mostly drawn from books and architecture (pages, browser, sites etc.). Most of these metaphors were static and one way. The steam metaphor is fundamentally different. It’s dynamic, it doesn’t live very well within a page and still very much evolving.
A stream. A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of information — that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow.
In a sense, he is trying to rationalize his investment strategy. But if he is correct, the shift from pages to ever-widening eddies of information will have a dramatic downstream impact on many Web businesses, especially media businesses. This rising stream has the potential to fundamentally change the contours of media distribution on the Web. Large destination sites like Yahoo and AOL, already weakened as distribution hubs by search and social networks, now face the prospect of becoming completely bypassed. No wonder AOL is sticking the stream in every part of its service, from its homepage to Bebo to AIM. (Yahoo is grappling with the emergence of the stream as well, but so far still thinks it can hold onto its place as a central traffic and distribution hub).
The stream does not replace Web pages or search, for that matter, but it has the potential to completely transform them. Already, we are seeing Web pages adopt the stream as a new user-interface. Web pages are increasingly being designed as places to present the most relevant streams of information. And with streams of data spreading everywhere, search actually becomes more important than ever as a navigation tool. As Borthwick points out:
Traffic isn’t distributed evenly in this new world. All of a sudden crowds can show up on your site.
Traffic occurs in bursts, depending on what people are paying attention to at that second across a variety of services. Someone might notice an obscure blog post on Twitter, where it starts spreading, then it moves to FriendFeed and Facebook and desktop stream readers such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop and before you know it, a hundred thousand people are reading that article. The stream creates a different form of syndication which cannot be licensed and cannot be controlled.
The problem, more than ever before, becomes one of information overload. How do you keep from drowning in the deluge? Borthwick suggests letting go of teh notion that you can ever master the stream, even just your own personal data stream of friend’s Tweets, updates, blog posts, Flickr photos, YouTube video finds and so on:
This isn’t an inbox we have to empty, or a page we have to get to the bottom of — its a flow of data that we can dip into at will but we can’t attempt to gain an all encompassing view of it.
So jump into the stream and let it carry you away. Or you can stand timidly on the banks until everyone else around you has already taken the plunge.
(Photo credit: Flickr/Justin Lowery)
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Section: Web
This is one story of hacking a website and making a change to your account that seems to have had a happy ending. According to the story, Douglas Mezzer and his roommate had a DSL account with iiNet and everything was going great until his roommate moved out. The DSL continued to work, however the billing was in the roommates name, and due to him not living there and Douglas being responsible for the bill, he thought it fitting to have the name on the account changed.
Of course, it was not that easy. What sounded like a simple name change ended up turning into something much more. It seems that when Douglas logged in he was able to update the address, phone number, email address, date of birth and a few other fields, however he was restricted from making any changes to the first and last name. What to do—he was forced to call customer service and have them make the change. Unfortunately, that also came with a $59 price tag. With little else to do, Douglas went ahead with the change despite having to pay, but it did not end there.
The next bill arrived and was still addressed to his old roommate. Just figuring that it was caught in a cross, he waited till the next bill, once again assuming that it would come addressed to himself. No luck, it was still addressed to his old roommate, so he took the matter in his own hands.
Douglas launched the ISP website and began checking the HTML with the Firebug plugin for Firefox. He made a few changes, which included adding his name and removing the “disabled” tag. Surprisingly it worked, his name was now changed. He even logged in and out to confirm and although he remained skeptical this change was confirmed when the next monthly bill came addressed to himself.
Thankfully in this case, there was a happy ending. Not only did Douglas get the bill to finally come in his name, but the Comms Manager at iiNet also made an effort to contact Douglas to thank him. I wonder if they also removed that $59 charge, or maybe removed the charge and then gave him an additional credit for making the change himself.
Moral of the story, in this case there was a happy ending, but I would not expect that to happen very often. In other words, while dealing with your ISP can be frustrating, it is most likely not wise to try and hack their website. Of course, if you do, we would love to hear the story.
Read [The Daily WTF] Via [Consumerist]
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Remember when Super Smash Brothers was the best game out? It was the greatest. Now Team Fortress 2 is one of the best games available and so it’s only fitting to have the Super Smash Brothers intro remade TF2-style. Major props to whoever made it too. Watch the video after the jump for a side-by-side comparison of the original and TF2 edition. Impressive.
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